Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tuesday July 11, 2006 @09:29PM
from the take-me-to-your-gallon dept.

eliot1785 writes "DARPA is now developing a new breed of satellites that can be precision-maneuvered in unison and easily perform advanced operations with built-in sensors, computers and thrusters. From the article: 'David Miller, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Space Systems Laboratory, says such satellites might be used for such tasks as building giant space telescopes and closely monitoring Earth. The shuttle Discovery last week delivered the second of three satellite test "droids" that are undergoing experiments at the International Space Station.'"

OBI-N LADEN: These are not the droids you're looking for. *handwave*PREDATOR DRONE: No, but this drone is looking for you. *boom*

OBI-N LADEN: That sucked. Oh well, being a blue glowie in paradise isn't so bad. Yo Yallah, how about the 72 virgins?YALLAH: Get the message, you did not. Raisins, I promised.OBI-N LADEN: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.DARTH VADER: Thats my line, idiot.

The confusion between "Die for Allah, get virgins" and "Die for Allah, get raisins" is actually a serious theological debate within Islam. See this Guardian story [guardian.co.uk] among a couple hundred other places. If Robbin Williams has Yodafied the joke before my apologies to him, but I haven't heard a word from the man since Mrs. Doubtfire and given that that was pre-September 11th I'm guessing I've never heard his take on Islam. Or Star Wars, for that matter.

"For my talent portion!" No, no, no! But recently, there was an article in the New York Times, the Koran scholars tell us that the actual translation is not 71 dark-haired virgins, but 71 Crystal-Clear Raisins... slight difference of interpretation, really! That's so strange, it's like, "thou shalt not kill," is "thou shalt not wear a kilt!" And the Scots are going, fuck off - virgins. But the Koran scholars tell us that the actual translation is "71 Crystal-Clear Raisins"... slight difference of interpreta

What?I'm a Muslim student of theology (and a SW Eng..go figure) and the article you just linked to only makes a rubbish postulation in the end by reference to a clueless orientalist. He says if we read the words in Syriac (as opposed to Arabic) then the virgins become raisins. Well done Sherlock. If you read it in swahili Muhammad becomes Bill Gates. And if you want a clear cut argument:

Are you referring to Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code [amazon.com] ? Sure, he's got a wife, but only because he ended up marrying someone who's even more of a kook than he is. I'm not sure that's something to be proud of, really.

With this technology, rogue nations and other terrorist organizations can't time and wait for our spy satellites to pass by and not have their nefarious schemes being watched.
Hopefully this will also speed up the time the intelligence agencies can spy on a place when a crisis or situation occurs.

How does one start a 'vote on this topic' counter thru the forums?
... I mean, Who really thinks these are "our" military spy satellites?

1) garbage collectors for all the space junk out there in orbit around us2) a new and interesting way of getting rid of those pesky competing satellites3) spiffy stratosphere-bouncing little comm links4) ways to make sure that Indian satellites don't achieve orbit5) new and interesting ways of avoiding Azimov's Laws of Robots-- including the Zeroeth Law

You made a few mistakes, this is DARPA we are talking about, so it should be:

1) Space recycler, makes space junk into man-made aimable meteors.
2) The REAL off switch for competing positional systems and other countries targeting satellites.
3) No change needed, you were dead on.
4) Control who gets to space.
5) Guarantee that SkyNet is undefeatable, and that resistance will be futile.

1) be happy that these didn't go into the drink (and stop worrying about that foam stuff)2) it only cost $14B per space ball3) they're rumored to bounce!4) they're using WiFi, but on Channel 14 (at least it's MIMO!)5) they can be used to fix the Hubble!!

The satellites the "article" talks about are the result of MIT and DARPA's Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES [mit.edu]...sounds like they were stretching a little bit to get decent sounding acronym). The immediate focus of research is to develop control systems for automated docking, with later potential applications of station-keeping and maybe even satellite repair. For example, you may recall a DoD satellite repair mis

From the article: 'David Miller, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Space Systems Laboratory, says such satellites might be used for such tasks as building giant space telescopes and closely monitoring Earth.

Or the obvious use for DARPA, destroying other satellites. (Conveniently left off the list.)

Probably not. Smaller size = less room for shielding = greater susceptibility to EMP. Pop a nuke high enough to make sure the EMP doesn't affect your terrestrial assets[0], and you're good to go. You'd need less precision than taking out a single target, and you could probably effectively clear a hemisphere with a half-dozen or so strikes.

Anytime DARPA or any other defense agency mentions "telescopes" they're usually referring to the kind that point down, not up. I see this as a potential test bed for a possible future interferometry-based spy satellite (be it SIGINT or IMINT).

While I agree with the previous poster, I would also note that such a satellite would, almost certainly, also be very useful to have from an astronomical standpoint. Think VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) or ULBI (ultra-long baseline interferometry). With enough of these satellites all working together and spread over an appropriate distance, we could potentially get a lot of information about neighboring solar systems. Add to that the possibility of using these sorts of devices for remote survey

While quite useful, remember that anything you see in the astronomy community is old-hat by defense standards. So if NASA is going to build an interferometer-based "terrestrial planet finder," then your guess is as good as mine (since I don't have clearance).

"I [David Miller, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Space Systems Laboratory] rented the first 'Star Wars' movie and showed (a) class the scene where Luke is practicing the use of the Force with a floating droid," Miller told the Christian Science Monitor. "I said: 'I want three of those. How do we start doing this?'"

...that an educational administrator can watch a 'Saturday morning serial'-kind of movie and can "start doing this" by finding enough budgetary feebs at NASA & DARPA that'll give him a wet-dream-amount of OUR tax $$$ for "satellites [that] might be used for such tasks as building giant space telescopes and closely monitoring Earth".

Yeah - "might": just about as plausible as defending the Earth from the FSM [wikipedia.org], or killing the Ori [wikipedia.org], or letting us know when the Vogons [wikipedia.org] arrive. WTF - don't we already have sufficient technology for satellites that can "closely" monitor the Earth?

More likely they'll just end-up being more orbital junk endangering something-or-other or making pretty, bright flashes when they de-orbit. Yeah, Miller - keep finding gov't funding for practically anything for MIT or else the management might look for someone who can.

He's sharing an amusing anecdote about an unusual source of inspiration. I'd lend more credit to the director of MIT's Space Systems Laboratory in running research projects to develop our space technology than the word of the most vocal/.er. I'd think his position and qualifications would give him a better foundation to determine the plausibility of this project more than a reader who picks around the semantics of the word 'might.' And as far as spending our tax money goes, you can do a whole lot worse tha

to smell a new olympic sport?
In sports news:
The Cornish spokesperson for the British Olympic
Synchronised Sattelite team was at pains to avoid the media
today; his only statement "We doon't reeeally know wheear thay arr"

With that parts list, I was thinking about gearing up my first 2x25 user mouse using bluetooth video phones, for use in a pub. Initially, double doors will connect the users credit card into a GPS tracked unit for use while inside. The credit card is surrendered on leaving the LCD unit. While inside the LCD unit, its screen becomes a magnification of a portion of a large screen, that can be seen from the bar.
Once the user takes a control, the user's mouse is activated up on the main screen. The main scree

How are these droids? 'Droid is short for Android, as in a human-shaped robot. And while this definition may not hold fast in a galaxy far, far away, it most definately does for us. Why not just say "Robot?"

Karel Capek, the creator of the word "robot", was from what is now the Czech Republic. That is hundreds and hundreds of miles away from Russia, and the word is derived from the Czech language, which split off from the ancestor common with Russian some 1500 years ago. Do you think it'd be accurate if, say, American inventor Thomas Edison were referred to as Guatemalan? We're talking about the same cultural and geographical distance between Capek a

"How are these droids? 'Droid is short for Android, as in a human-shaped robot. And while this definition may not hold fast in a galaxy far, far away, it most definately does for us. Why not just say "Robot?""

You clearly answered yor own question... they aren't called androids because they fall short of the human shape!

Is it paranoid? You see...I once had a droidthat was paranoidas much as i triedtried hard to avoidupsetting my droidit shook, screeched and buzzedand stared into the voidi told him "hey, chill!"my pretty boy and droidI crooned, shook and dancedand I played him pretty tunesfrom andrew weber loydoh i got that name wrongbut whatever heck nevermindoh i'm so very annoyedwhere is his warranty cardhe got me, too, paranoidlet's take his ass to shopbefore he had deployednewfangled nasty techalarms, weapons and toyed

...start developing their own ideas, and not just turn science fiction movies props into toys? Sure, Arthur C Clarke had some pretty good ideas (having a goal to make realistic things in the first place -- what Star Wars never had), but even trying to make something that looks like a shuttle from "2001" movie ended up a rather suboptimal vehicle (that was obsolete in a *real* 2001, leave alone now).

Can anyone please tell us, what would be the projected lifetime of those things in open space with ways of storing energy/fuel that are going to be available within 10-15 years? That means, no thermonuclear shit, thermonuclear was 25 years away for 50 years already, thankyouverymuch.

What about precision of movement while performing any operation that a drunk guy in a space suit over another space suit over pajamas won't do better? How many times the expected mass of that thing is going to increase to be able to use a screwdriver? Hello anyone? Did anyone think about any relevant technical issues at all, or the goal was to make a prop for "Star Wars VII: Palpatine Is Still Alive, Dammit" to be shot entirely on ISS (and released exclusively there, too)?